What’s in a Smile?

It is sometimes interesting to look at what makes a political campaign. Recently, the rhetoric has been over Joe Biden’s “Cheshire Cat” grin which somehow made him callous to the “serious issues being discussed”. Yet here is Mitt Romney during the Presidential counterpart to this debate demonstrating the same what GOP calls “condescending” smile. Surely the issues being debated held that same weight of seriousness?

Sadly, way too much time is being spent on this sort of silliness while not enough time is being spent on the real issues that face our great country.

Or, perhaps the GOP rhetoric over Biden’s grin is actually clever spin meant to target an older part of our brain. Perhaps its a campaign strategy meant to target the truly undecided voter by giving them heuristic rather than analytical data. How’s this important? Heuristic data helps us make snap decisions. It helps the outfielder catch that fly ball. It helps the voter in the voting booth press that “R” or “D” button. In fact, science is showing that we weigh heuristic data much higher than we do analytical.

So, in the spirit of it all, based on smiles alone, who seems like the nicer guy?